When the first locomotives were being built and critics gravely asserted that suffocation lay in wait for anyone who reached the awful speed of 30 miles an hour Only 80 years ago, the idea of the domestic electric light was pooh-poohed by all the experts. When gas securities nose-dived in 1878 because Thomas Edison {already a formidable figurewith the phonograph and the caebon microphone to his credit} announced that he was working on the incandescent lamp, the British Parliament set up a committee to look into the matter.
The distinguished witnesses reported, to the refief of the gas companies, that Edison's ideas were "good enough for our transatlantic friends . . . but unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men.